


Silence Is Gray

by Rynn336



Series: Call Me Hopeless, But Not Romantic [4]
Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Angst, Frontotemporal Dementia, M/M, Not So Subtle Reference To Ibuki's Quote, Spoilers, THIS ANGST IS SO HIGH YOU COULD SELL TICKETS TO SEE IT, Wow, very much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-21 20:23:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7402564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rynn336/pseuds/Rynn336
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes there is more to be heard in the pauses and the silences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silence Is Gray

_Tell me that you’re alright_

_Yeah, like I really care_

_Stomp. Stomp._ Nagito stares at the sidewalk as he slams his foot down, the ants beneath him scurrying around in a panic, ash across a gray sky. _Stomp._ Concentrate. _Stomp._ A little girl and her mother hurry past him, the mother with her arm protectively around her daughter’s shoulders.

Nagito’s throat is dry, panic like the ants’ raging hot and fast through his veins, and he breathes evenly, slowly. _Stomp._ Calm. Down. _Stomp._ His hands shake at his sides, and he grins, not sure what he’s laughing at but laughing all the same. Somebody help him. Please.

He hears a voice from his front door, but he doesn’t look up. He can’t tear his gaze from the pavement, and the voice is like a mosquito whine in his ear, annoying and hard to hear.

Someone pushes him from behind, and he stumbles and whirls around to see his mother, confusion, concern, and scorn battling for control over her expression. “Nagito. What are you doing?”

He blinks. What is he doing? “I don’t know,” he answers, and his phone rings. It’s Hajime’s ringtone, and the only one he ever answers. He turns and walks away, putting the phone up to his ear as his mother shouts angrily behind him.

 

Crazy is not the word for it. He isn’t crazy. He doesn’t have enough control over his mind to be crazy. His brain does what it wants, and he follows it like an obedient puppy, a vessel for the souls of all of the atrophied nerve cells in his head.

Months turn into years and every day he knows that he’ll smash one more ant today. He’ll organize the cupboards in the kitchen with a little more desperation. School is out for the summer and he can’t stand it. He needs questions to answer. He needs a reason to try, something to distract him from his own rebellious mind.

He isn’t crazy. He isn’t falling apart. He is simply…falling.

 

Hajime is not crazy, either. He has too much control over his mind to be crazy. His brain does what he wants it to, and he goes about his life like he should, spending time with friends and watching TV and calling Nagito to talk for hours over the phone, until their parents burst into one of their rooms and tell them to get off the damn phone, they’re wasting data.

He’s put off the surgery for months. Another day, another day, another day he’ll call Kirigiri and tell him he wants to do it, but he _will_ call him, one of these days, and then Nagito is sure he’ll be lost to the world. Lost to his friends, lost to Nagito, lost to himself.

He isn’t crazy. He isn’t falling apart. He is simply falling.

 

“Hello?” Nagito says. He knows it’s Hajime, but he likes the confirmation that nothing has changed.

“Hi, Nagito, it’s me.”

“Hi.”

They’re silent.

“How are you doing?”

“Fine.”

More silence.

 

If silence could be a mantra, it would be theirs. They spend more time not talking than they do talking. Gaps in space that could be filled with noise, noise, noise –Nagito imagines it now in the voice of the narrator for The Grinch Who Stole Christmas – but is instead filled with the words they don’t want to say and know they never will, and the hopes and regrets they never voice. The silence itself is screaming, “NOTHING” and “FINE” and “SURE” and so many other words that mean nothing to anyone.

 

“I love you,” Hajime says, and Nagito knows that something is wrong. Those are the words they don’t say, more of the silence’s favorites. They just know. They don’t ask.

“Yeah.” And then, realizing what Hajime expects him to do: “Love you, too…I guess?”

Silence.

Silence.

_Silence._

The phone clicks, and Nagito stuffs it back into his pocket. Hajime will tell him if he wants him to know something. He’s not going to ask, because the silence will do it for him.

He keeps walking down his street and passes the park on the corner. He never liked it there; instead, he goes until he reaches the old house on the next block, the one that’s been for sale for years. He sits down on the front step and scratches the concrete hard with his fingernails, listening to the scrape. Back and forth. His mother will find him if she wants to, but she won’t, and she doesn’t want to.

“Worthless,” he tells the silence as the tremor starts up in his hands again.

**Author's Note:**

> Whoa, I had a hard time writing this chapter. I've been doing research on behavior variant frontotemporal dementia but I'm still not sure I did it justice.
> 
> Hi!
> 
> If you can't tell, this fic is about halfway over. Nagito (or, as Autocorrect is always telling me, Nugget) is in the moderate stages of his dementia, and Hajime is still hesitant about the Ultimate Hope thing. Now, I have to remind you that this is an AU, so there will be some things coming up that don't quite fit with the canon, and would have altered the story had they actually happened in canon. 
> 
> One thing I'd like to let you know is that this series and my other ongoing work for Undertale will be on hiatus starting July 10. I'm headed to Alaska for a month and will be back August 9, so you can expect an update for both works on either the tenth or the eleventh. 
> 
> As always, let me know in the comments what you liked and what you thought I could've done better. Any feedback is greatly appreciated! 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
